Author: Nick Farrell

Tech Data wants new partners in education market

Tech Data is recruiting partners to address what it thinks as a significant opportunity to develop new business potential in the education market as schools reassess their needs and update their software over the approaching summer break.

Matt Child, managing director – Advanced Solutions, Tech Data, UK and Ireland said the distie is ready to onboard partners [is that like waterboarding? Ed.] and support them in transacting on Google Workspace for Education – formerly known as G Suite Enterprise for Education.

Integrity360 scores August Equity cash

Security outfit Integrity360 has announced a major strategic investment from private equity firm August Equity.

For some reason, neither outfit is saying how much has been invested but since they both spent a lot of cash on issuing a press release on a subject without having the main point of the story somewhere in it, they must feel they must be rolling in it and suddenly have more money than sense.

In addition to the investment funding, Integrity360 founder and CEO Eoin Goulding is partnering with Ian Brown, who joins the company as Executive Chairman, with Goulding taking on the new role of President. Brown, an established entrepreneur, and industry veteran has been running technology businesses for over 25 years, including most recently SecureData, the UK cybersecurity services business acquired by Orange in 2019.

Avanan launches new new Global Channel Partner Programme

Cloudy security outfit specialist Avanan has launched a new Global Channel Partner Programme.

The initiative has been designed to offer VARs, MSPs, and MSSPs the opportunity to extend Avanan’s patented pre-delivery protection, which claims to stop the delivery of malicious emails before they reach the inbox.

Compatible with collaboration apps such as Microsoft Teams and file-sharing platforms like Dropbox, Avanan scans emails after default security software but before the inbox – which the firm says leads to a 99.2 percent reduction in phishing emails reaching their destination.

Channel backs Lenovo’s DaaS

Lenovo is starting to see increased levels of involvement with the channel and its desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) proposition, it said.

The vendor piloted the DaaS programme in its first quarter. Lenovo channel director Jane Ashworth (pictured) said the programme was built from partner feedback.

“There are a lot of different variations out there, done in different ways, and a lot of assumptions, but at the end of the day, we wanted to build something that was future-proof from the experience of our partners.”

With that three-tier strategy, which is all built on feedback, Lenovo has a model that’s not restricted to one tier or to a certain partner type, said Ashworth.

Live Infosecurity Europe delayed

Infosecurity Europe, Europe’s big information security event, has announced that it is postponing the live exhibition and conference due to run at London Olympia in July, following the government’s fearless delay in lifting the final COVID-19 restrictions.

Instead, it will deliver a virtual exhibition and conference from 13-15 July 2021, the original dates of the event. The in-person event will now be held in 2022.

This year’s Infosecurity Europe was set to combine both live and online elements. The planned virtual programme will be retained, and further built out with a rich line-up of presentations, talks and discussions. Among the confirmed sessions are:

Deep Instinct offers big anti-ransomware warranty

Cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct is offering what it claims to be “the world’s largest anti-ransomware warranty.”

The vendor is offering a £2 million warranty which will apply to the firm’s customers which have “more than 10,000 endpoints or licenses” as part of its premium package and is aimed at “enterprise-level clients.

Deep Instinct EMEA VP Brooks Wallace said these customers will be eligible for the warranty if they are subject to a ransomware attack when using the company’s deep learning technology, or if they experience a false positive rate of more than 0.1 per cent over two consecutive quarters.

“The reason that we’re doing this is that there’s this massive alert of false positives in the world today that are taking up a lot of analysts’ time and it’s really driving people nuts”, Wallace said.

“Right now, they spend about 25 percent of their time reviewing false positives which is soaking up their analysts’ time and there’s a lot of level alert fatigue and burnout taking place. And so we’re giving our customers something of value based on our confidence in our technology.”

Foundries.io raises cash to secure IoT

Foundries.io has raised $8 million in Series A funding to push its secure IoT vision.

The funding is led by IQ Capital, with participation from Crane Venture Partners and Backed VC.

Led by technology industry pioneers, George Grey and Ian Drew, Foundries.io has developed an open source platform that provides OEMs and Systems Integrators a common software base to develop, test, deploy, manage and maintain secure IoT and Edge devices through a single cloud-native solution.

This means that companies can ensure the lifetime support of connected devices, unlock innovation, and improve speed-to-market while saving time and money.

The new funding comes on the back of rapid growth since its inception in 2017 and seed round funding in 2019, which has already resulted in significant partnerships and a strong pipeline.

Maintel finds Sanctuary contract

Social housing outfit Sanctuary has appointed the cloudy Maintel to deliver a SD-WAN enabled solution for its 800 sites.

Sanctuary chose Maintel to help them move to an SD-WAN system to deliver a secure, flexible network with the capacity to support the Group’s business goals.

As Sanctuary’s incumbent unified communications infrastructure solutions provider, Maintel has previously helped install and maintain a Mitel Unified Communications solution across its entire estate.

The new SD-WAN solution provides for a software-defined approach to managing Sanctuary’s wide area networks, offering ease of deployment, centralised orchestration, and improved visibility, helping improve connectivity to their sites, data centres and for cloud provisioning.

Sanctuary’s use of Microsoft Teams means that Sanctuary’s workforce can become more mobile.

Dell appoints new co-COO

Dell Technologies has appointed Chuck Whitten as its new co-chief operating officer to “help lead Dell’s next phase of growth”.

Whitten will take up the new role from 16 August alongside COO Jeff Clarke after spending the last 22 years at Bain & Company.

Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell, said that Whitten joined the company at a pivotal time to give us greater leadership capacity to cover more ground, assess more opportunities and speed decision making to best serve customers.

Cohesity does well on the back of digital move

Cloudy Cohesity has been doing well in its third quarter as companies simplify data management, mitigating threats from ransomware attacks, and accelerating their move to the cloud.

The third quarter, which ended April 30, 2021, saw Cohesity subscription business increase by nearly  80 percent year on year in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

The company saw a strong net expansion rate which continues to exceed 130 percent in the third quarter, a benchmark for leading subscription/SaaS companies. This means that ARR from Cohesity’s existing customer set grew more than 30 percent over the last 12 months.

Cohesity saw more than a 40 percent increase in the number of customers bringing its customer count to nearly 2,500 globally. Cohesity recorded its largest transaction from a single customer in company history.

Vodaphone and Amazon edge to be on the same wavelength

Vodafone has coupled with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to launch Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC) services delivered with AWS Wavelength for Vodafone business customers in the UK.

The launch follows Vodafone trials with companies in a range of areas, including sports technology, autonomous transport, biometric security, remote virtual reality, and factory automation. Vodafone is the only telecoms operator able to offer business customers the combination of 5G and MEC services in the UK.

MEC infrastructure is better known as moving services ‘closer to the edge of the network’. AWS Wavelength brings AWS compute and storage services to the edge of Vodafone’s network, enabling applications that require increased speeds, massive bandwidth, and ultra-low latency, such as industrial automation, video analytics and machine learning inference (artificial intelligence) at the edge, and interactive live video streaming.

The pair said that hosting applications closer to the end-user means that data does not have to cross the internet to be processed in locations around the world. This approach means that lag, known as latency, can be almost eradicated as data is both captured and processed closer to the device, offering much faster response times and a much-improved experience.

Avast scores Enterprise Nation as a partner

Security outfit Avast has announced a strategic partnership with Enterprise Nation small business network and business support provider, which will see it become the exclusive cybersecurity partner for the UK national network.

The partnership aims to deliver key cybersecurity resources and training for more than half a million UK small businesses to help them securely operate and thrive in today’s digital economy.

According to the Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Study 2021, 39 percent and a quarter of charities reported cyberattacks in the last 12 months. The study also suggested that the threat level was potentially higher over the pandemic as businesses found it harder to administer security effectively.

Avast VP Worldwide Channel & Alliances Marc Botham said: “SMBs are the lifeblood of the UK economy, and they have faced unprecedented challenges in recent times, including temporary closures of their businesses, implementing remote working, and scaling e-commerce for sales and customer communication. For many, they have had to do this without dedicated, or at best minimal, IT support in the face of increased cyberattacks. The focus now must be on post-Covid business recovery and growth. We are committed to working with Enterprise Nation to support SMBs by providing them with the tools, resources, and insights they need to optimise their digital possibilities securely and effectively.”

Iguazio teams up with Boston

Iguazio, a data science & MLOps platform build firm, announced a partnership with Boston Limited, an Nvidia Elite Partner and leading provider of high‐performance, mission-critical server and storage .

The partnership enables both companies to extend their offerings to enterprises across industries looking to bring data science into real-life applications, regardless of the size or skill set of their internal teams.

Iguazio CEO and co‐founder Asaf Somekh said that companies need better ways to implement their AI solutions in real‐world environments, to help them cut costs, work more efficiently, and accelerate the rollout of new AI services and products for customers.

“This radical shift to transforming business models with AI typically requires highly customisable infrastructure, as well as a streamlined data science workflow to navigate the transformation effectively and efficiently”, he said.

IT leaders worried about debt

More than 69 percent of IT leaders identify technical debt as a major threat to their companies’ ability to innovate, according to a new report from OutSystems.

In OutSysem’s latest report, “The Growing Threat of Technical Debt examines the cost of technical debt facing businesses across industries and geographies.

OutSystems CEO and Founder Paulo Rosado, said the combination of old code along with the new generation of mobile apps, stack applications, and SaaS sprawl are robbing organisations of resources, time, and the ability to innovate.

“This report proves that technical debt will continue to compound, and requires a new approach to move past it and innovate at a pace and scale for true competitive advantage.”

Ensono appoints Birch as new GM

Cloudy Ensono has appointed Hannah Birch as General Manager (GM) and Deputy Managing Director for the European business.

In this role, she will drive the European growth strategy as Ensono looks to use the investment from new owner KKR and its recent acquisition of cloud-native consultancy Amido.

Ensono’s, Managing Director, Europe Barney Taylor said: “With our recent acquisition of Amido and KKR’s investment in Ensono, we have significant momentum and an accelerated opportunity to invest and grow in both the UK and European markets. Hannah is the right person to drive our growth ambition and to continue to build on our reputation as a leader in the technology space.”

Birch joins Ensono from Accenture where she led the company’s UK Technology Business for Insurance and was a member of the Technology Leadership Team for UK & Ireland.